A sometimes contentious and divided jury convicted former police officer Charles Schwarz of perjury Tuesday but failed to reach agreement on whether he helped torture Abner Louima in the bathroom of a Brooklyn police station in 1997. The jurors found that Schwarz lied when he denied leading Louima, a Haitian immigrant, from the front desk of the police precinct toward the bathroom.

Mayor-elect Michael Bloomberg reached back to the out-of-fashion David N. Dinkins era for New York's next police commissioner, Raymond Kelly. In announcing the appointment, Bloomberg brought up a point often obscured by the crime-stopper reputation of Rudolph W. Giuliani's administration: The city's once-soaring crime rate began to fall two years before Giuliani was elected mayor.

The city has approved a $9-million settlement with a Haitian immigrant who was tortured in a police station, seeking to close an ugly chapter in the history of the nation's largest police department. Under the tentative deal, Abner Louima would receive payment from the city and the Police Benevolent Assn. but would drop his demand that the New York Police Department changes how it deals with officers accused of abuse, sources close to the case said Thursday. Mayor Rudolph W.

Two former police officers were put on probation for misleading FBI investigators about the torture of a prisoner in 1997. Francisco Rosario, 36, and Rolando Aleman, 30, were among six officers to either be convicted or plead guilty in the attack on Abner Louima, a Haitian immigrant who was dragged into a Brooklyn precinct bathroom and sodomized with a broken broomstick. Rosario was sentenced to three years' probation by U.S. District Judge Eugene Nickerson.

New York City wants to allow the same civilian agency that investigates police misconduct to take its cases to court to make the complaint process more efficient. Currently, the Civilian Complaint Review Board investigates claims of abuse filed by the public, then sends cases with evidence of misconduct to Police Department lawyers who decide whether the cases can be prosecuted. Under the change, expected to be completed within 90 days, the board would prosecute cases instead of forwarding them.

Howard Safir, whose leadership of New York's Police Department was marked by plummeting crime rates but also racial incidents that drew national attention, announced Tuesday he is resigning as commissioner. "I am leaving probably the best job that any human being could have," he told a City Hall news conference with, as usual, Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani at his side. "Crime is the lowest it's been in three decades."

New York Police Commissioner Howard Safir, a close ally of Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, will resign today, police sources say. Safir, a former fire commissioner, came to the high-profile job in April 1996. He and Giuliani presided over a dramatic drop in crime but have been criticized for strong-arm police tactics, especially against minorities.

Police were accused Tuesday of being slow to respond when at least 16 women were attacked in Central Park over the weekend by gangs of young men who pulled their clothes off and groped them. Anne Peyton Bryant, a 29-year-old kick-boxing teacher in New York, was in-line skating when a group set upon her Sunday, trying to pull down her pants. Bryant struggled and the men ran off. "I skated over to an officer and told him I was attacked and that the crowd was out of control," Bryant said.

Two undercover narcotics officers fatally shot two reputed gang members after they robbed the policemen by brandishing fake handguns, authorities said Saturday. The shootings come with tensions in the city still high after the fatal March 16 shooting of an unarmed black man. Police were quick to defend the officers in this incident, which occurred during a Friday night drug operation in Brooklyn.

In Haitian culture, a body is not properly buried until mourners touch the coffin or hearse as it leaves the church. Without this farewell, the religious ritual--and a family's cycle of grieving--is interrupted. That's what happened last weekend when Patrick Dorismond was laid to rest in New York and thousands were prevented from paying their respects to the 26-year-old security guard who was gunned down by police in a drug bust gone wrong.